Breathtaking Aurora Time-Lapse Captures the Northern Lights Over the Rockies

Here’s a two-minute time-lapse escape into the Rocky Mountains for those of you still stuck at the office today. Because last Friday, while us schmucks were working, Canadian photographer Richard Gottardo — whose work we’ve had the pleasure of featuring several times before — was chasing the aurora borealis through the Rockies.

All of the footage in the video above was shot on November 9th, according to the video’s description. It took Gottardo and Experience Aurora partner Andras Schram over seven hours of shooting across almost 250 miles of wilderness to capture the 1,500 photos it took to create the final product.

This isn’t the first time, or even the first time this year, that we’ve had reason to show you photographs of the northern lights taken by Gottardo in the Canadian Rockies. But that’s not to say that chasing down the northern lights is easy to do.

Gottardo’s aurora images from earlier this year were the result of a few months patiently spent in the mountains waiting for the stars to align… or more accurately, waiting for the proper astronomical conditions.

The display photographed above was due to a burst of solar wind and a southern pointing Interplanetary Magnetic Field (or southward Bz), which kept the so-called “polar spirits” dancing all night and into the morning, giving Gottardo ample opportunity to get magnificent shot after magnificent shot.

(via The Huffington Post)